A Survey of Grown Unschoolers I: Overview of Findings

In a study that preceded the one to be described here, my colleague Gina Riley and I surveyed parents in unschooling families—that is, in families where the children did not go to school and were not homeschooled in any curriculum-based way, but instead were allowed to take charge of their own education. The call for participants for that study was posted, in September, 2011, on my blog (here) and on various other websites, and a total of 232 families who met our criteria for participation responded and filled out the questionnaire. Most respondents were mothers, only 9 were fathers. In that study we asked questions about their reasons for unschooling, the pathways by which they came to unschooling, and the major benefits and challenges of unschooling in their experience.

I posted the results of that study as a series of three articles in this blog—here, here, and here—and Gina and I also published a paper on it in the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning (here). Not surprisingly, the respondents in that survey were very enthusiastic and positive about their unschooling experiences. They described benefits having to do with their children’s psychological and physical wellbeing, improved social lives, and improved efficiency of learning and attitudes about learning. They also wrote about the increased family closeness and harmony, and the freedom from having to follow a school-imposed schedule, that benefited the whole family. The challenges they described had to do primarily with having to defend their unschooling practices to those who did not understand them or disapproved of them, and with overcoming some of their own culturally-ingrained, habitual ways of thinking about education.

The results of that survey led us to wonder how those who are unschooled, as opposed to their parents, feel about the unschooling experience. We also had questions about the ability of grown unschoolers to pursue higher education, if they chose to do so, and to find gainful and satisfying adult employment. Those questions led us to the survey of grown unschoolers that is described in this article and, in more detail, in three more articles to follow.

Survey Method for Our Study of Grown Unschoolers

On March 12, 2013, Gina and I posted on this blog (here) an announcement to recruit participants. That announcement was also picked up by others and reposted on various websites and circulated through online social media. To be sure that potential participants understood what we meant by “unschooling,” we defined it in the announcement as follows:

“Unschooling is not schooling. Unschooling parents do not send their children to school and they do not do at home the kinds of things that are done at school. More specifically, they do not establish a curriculum for their children, do not require their children to do particular assignments for the purpose of education, and do not test their children to measure progress. Instead, they allow their children freedom to pursue their own interests and to learn, in their own ways, what they need to know to follow those interests. They may, in various ways, provide an environmental context and environmental support for the child's learning. In general, unschoolers see life and learning as one.”

The announcement went on to state that participants must (a) be at least 18 years of age; (b) have been unschooled (by the above definition) for at least two years during what would have been their high school years; and (c) not have attended 11th and 12th grade at a high school.

The announcement included Gina’s email address, with a request that potential participants contact her to receive a copy of the consent form and survey questionnaire. The survey included questions about the respondent’s gender; date of birth; history of schooling, home schooling, and unschooling (years in which they had done each); reasons for their unschooling (as they understood them); roles that their parents played in their education during their unschooling years; any formal higher education they had experienced subsequent to unschooling (including how they gained admission and how they adapted to it); their current employment; their social life growing up and now; the main advantages and disadvantages they experienced from their unschooling; and their judgment as to whether or not they would unschool their own children.

We received the completed questionnaires over a period of six months, and Gina and I, separately, read and reread them to generate a coding system, via qualitative analysis, for the purpose of categorizing the responses. After agreeing on a coding system, we then, separately, reread the responses to make our coding judgments, and then compared our separate sets of judgments and resolved discrepancies by discussion.

The Participants, and Their Division into Three Groups

A total of 75 people who met the criteria filled out and returned the survey. Of these, 65 were from the United States, 6 were from Canada, 3 were from the UK, and 1 was from Germany (where unschooling is illegal). The median age of the respondents was 24, with a range from age 18 to 49. Eight were in their teens, 48 were in their 20s, 17 were in their 30s, and 2 were in their 40s. Fifty-eight (77%) were women, 16 were men, and 1 self-identified as gender queer. The high proportion of women probably represents a general tendency for women to be more responsive to survey requests than are men. It is not the case that more girls than boys are unschooled; indeed, our previous study suggested that the balance is in the opposite direction—there were somewhat more boys than girls undergoing unschooling in the families that responded to that survey.

For purposes of comparison, we divided the respondents into three groups based on the last grade they had completed of schooling or homeschooling. Group I were entirely unschooled—no K-12 schooling at all and no homeschooling (the term “homeschooling” here and elsewhere in this report refers to schooling at home that is not unschooling). Group II had one or more years of schooling or homeschooling, but none beyond 6th grade; and Group III had one or more years of schooling or homeschooling beyond 6th grade. Thus, in theory (and in fact), those in Group II could have had anywhere from 1 to 7 years (K-6) of schooling/homeschooling and those in Group III could have had anywhere from 1 to 11 years (K-10) of schooling/homeschooling.

The table below shows the breakdown of some of our statistical findings across the three groups. The column headings show the number of participants in each group. The first three data rows show, respectively, the median and range of ages, the median and range of total years of schooling plus homeschooling, and the percentage of respondents that were female for each group. It is apparent that the three groups were quite similar in number of participants, median age, and percent female, but, of course, differed on the index of number of years of schooling plus homeschooling.

Their Formal Higher Education After Unschooling

Question 5 of the survey read, “Please describe briefly any formal higher education you have experienced, such as community college/college/graduate school. How did you get into college without having a high school diploma? How did you adjust from being unschooled to being enrolled in a more formal type of educational experience? Please list any degrees you have obtained or degrees you are currently working toward.”

I’ll describe their responses to this question much more fully in the next article in this series, where I’ll make ample use of the participants’ own words. Here I’ll simply summarize some of the statistical findings that came from our coding of the responses.

Overall, 62 (83%) of the participants reported that they had pursued some form of higher education. This included vocational training (such as culinary school) and community college courses as well as conventional bachelor’s degree programs and graduate programs beyond that. As can be seen in data row 4 of the table, this percentage was rather similar across the three groups.

Overall, 33 (44%) of the participants had completed a bachelor’s degree or higher or were currently fulltime students in a bachelor’s program. As shown in data row 5 of the table, the likelihood of pursuing a bachelor’s degree or higher was inversely related to the amount of previous schooling. Those in the always-unschooled group were the most likely to go on to a bachelor’s program, and those in the group that had some schooling past 6th grade were least likely to. This difference, though substantial, did not reach the conventional level of statistical significance (a chi square test revealed a p = .126).

Of the 33 who went on to a bachelor’s degree programs, 7 reported that they had previously received a general education diploma (GED) by taking the appropriate test, and 3 reported that they had gained a diploma through an online procedure. The others had gained admission to a bachelor’s program with no high-school diploma except, in a few cases, a self-made diploma that, we assume, had no official standing. Only 7 of the 33 reported taking the SAT or ACT tests as a route to college admission. By far the most common stepping-stone to a four-year college for these young people was community college. Twenty-one of the 33 took community college courses before applying to a four-year college and used their community college transcript as a basis for admission. Some began to take such courses at a relatively young age (age 13 in one case, age 16 in typical cases) and in that way gained a headstart on their college career. By transferring their credits, some reduced the number of semesters (and the tuition cost) required to complete a bachelor’s degree. Several also mentioned interviews and portfolios as means to gain college admission.

The colleges they attended were quite varied. They ranged from state universities (e.g. the University of South Carolina and UCLA) to an Ivy League university (Cornell) to a variety of small liberal-arts colleges (e.g. Mt. Holyoke, Bennington, and Earlham).

The participants reported remarkably little difficulty academically in college. Students who had never previously been in a classroom or read a textbook found themselves getting straight A’s and earning honors, both in community college courses and in bachelor’s programs. Apparently, the lack of an imposed curriculum had not deprived them of information or skills needed for college success. Most reported themselves to be at an academic advantage compared with their classmates, because they were not burned out by previous schooling, had learned as unschoolers to be self-directed and self-responsible, perceived it as their own choice to go to college, and were intent on making the most of what the college had to offer. A number of them reported disappointment with the college social scene. They had gone to college hoping to be immersed in an intellectually stimulating environment and, instead, found their fellow students to be more interested in frat parties and drinking. I will describe all this more fully in the next article in this series.

Their Careers

Question 4 of the survey read, “Are you currently employed? If so, what do you do? Does your current employment match any interests/activities you had as an unschooled child/teen? If so, please explain.” Our analyses of responses to this question led us to generate a brief follow-up questionnaire, which we sent to all of the participants, in which we asked them to list and describe the paying jobs they had held, to indicate whether or not they earned enough to support themselves, and to describe any career aspirations they currently had in mind. Sixty-three (84%) of the original 75 participants responded to this follow-up questionnaire.

The great majority of respondents were gainfully employed at the time of the survey. Exceptions were some of the full-time students and some mothers with young children. Of those who responded to the follow-up questionnaire, 78% said they were financially self-sufficient, though a number of these added that their income was modest and they were financially independent in part because of their frugal lifestyle. Several of them described frugality as a value and said they would far rather do work they enjoyed and found meaningful than other work that would be more lucrative.

Collectively, the respondents had pursued a wide range of jobs and careers, but two generalizations jumped out at us in our qualitative analyses and coding of these.

The first generalization is that a remarkably high percentage of the respondents were pursuing careers that we categorized as in the creative arts—a category that included fine arts, crafts, music, photography, film, and writing. Overall, 36 (48%) of the participants were pursuing such careers. Remarkably, as shown in data row 8 of the table, 79% of those in the always-unschooled group were pursuing careers in this category. The observation that the always-unschooled participants were more likely to pursue careers in the creative arts than were the other participants was highly significant statistically (p < .001 by a chi square test).

The second generalization is that a high percentage of participants were entrepreneurs. Respondents were coded into this category if they had started their own business and were making a living at it or working toward making a living at it. This category overlapped considerably with the creative arts category, as many were in the business of selling their own creative products or services. Overall, by our coding, 40 (53%) of the respondents were entrepreneurs. As can be seen in data row 9 of the table, this percentage, too, was greatest for those in the always-unschooled group (63%), but in this case the differences across groups did not approach statistical significance.

In response to the question about the relationship of their adult employment to their childhood interests and activities, 58 (77%) of the participants described a clear relationship. In many cases the relationship was direct. Artists, musicians, theater people, and the like had quite seamlessly turned childhood avocations into adult careers; and several outside of the arts likewise described natural evolutions from avocations to careers. As shown in data row 6, the percentage exhibiting a close match between childhood interests and adult employment was highest for those in the always-unschooled group, though this difference did not approach statistical significance.

All of these generalizations regarding unschoolers’ subsequent employment will be illustrated, with quotations from the surveys, in the third article in this series.

Their Evaluations of Their Unschooling Experience

Question 7 of the survey read, “What, for you, were the main advantages of unschooling? Please answer both in terms of how you felt as a child growing up and how you feel now, looking back at your experiences. In your view, how did unschooling help you in your transition toward adulthood?”

Almost all of the respondents, in various ways, wrote about the freedom and independence that unschooling gave them and the time it gave them to discover and pursue their own interests. Seventy percent of them also said, in one way or another, that the experience enabled them to develop as highly self-motivated, self-directed individuals. Many also wrote about the learning opportunities that would not have been available if they had been in school, about their relatively seamless transition to adult life, and about the healthier (age-mixed) social life they experienced out of school contrasted with what they would have experienced in school.

Question 8 read, “What, for you, were the main disadvantages of unschooling? Again, please answer both in terms of how you felt as a child growing up and how you feel now. In your view, did unschooling hinder you at all in your transition toward adulthood?”

Twenty-eight of the 75 respondents reported no disadvantage at all. Of the remaining 47, the most common disadvantages cited were (1) dealing with others’ criticisms and judgments of unschooling (mentioned by at least 21 respondents); (2) some degree of social isolation (mentioned by 16 respondents), which came in part from there being relatively few other homeschoolers or unschoolers nearby; and (3) the social adjustment they had to make, in higher education, to the values and social styles of those who had been schooled all their lives (mentioned by 14 respondents).

For 72 of the 75 respondents, the advantages of unschooling clearly, in their own minds, outweighed the disadvantages. The opposite was true for only 3 of the participants, 2 of whom expressed emphatically negative views both of their own unschooling and of unschooling in general (to be detailed in the fourth article in this series).

Question 9 read, “If you choose to have a family/children, do you think you will choose to unschool them? Why or why not?” One respondent omitted this question. Of the remaining 74, 50 (67%) responded in a way that we coded as clearly “yes,” and among them 8 already had children of school age and were unschooling them. Of the remainder, 19 responded in a way that we coded as “maybe” (for them it depended on such factors as the personality and desires of the child, the agreement of the other parent, or the availability or lack of availability of a good alternative school nearby), and five responded in a way that we coded as clearly “no.” The five “no’s” included two of the three who were negative about their own unschooling experience and three others, who despite their positive feelings about their own unschooling would, for various reasons, not unschool their own child.

The fourth article in this series will delve much more deeply into the advantages and disadvantages of unschooling as perceived and described by these respondents.

Limitation of the Survey

A major limitation of this study, of course, is that the participants are a self-selected sample, not a random sample, of grown unschoolers. As already noted, relatively few men responded to the survey. A bigger problem is that the sample may disproportionately represent those who are most pleased with their unschooling experiences and their subsequent lives. Indeed, it seems quite likely that those who are more pleased about their lives would be more eager to share their experiences, and therefore more likely to respond to the survey, than those who are less pleased. Therefore, this study, by itself, cannot be a basis for strong claims about the experiences and feelings of the whole population of unschoolers. What the study does unambiguously show, however, is that it is possible to take the unschooling route and then go on to a highly satisfying adult life. For the group who responded to our survey, unschooling appears to have been far more advantageous than disadvantageous in their pursuits of higher education, desired careers, and other meaningful life experiences.

Stay tuned for the remaining three articles in this series (to be posted later, one at a time), where you will read much more about these grown unschoolers’ experiences, in their own words.

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What are your thoughts and questions about this study, to the degree that I have described it so far, or about unschooling in general? What unschooling experiences—positive or negative—have you had that you are willing to share? This blog is a forum for discussion, and your stories, comments, and questions are valued and treated with respect by me and other readers. As always, I prefer if you post your thoughts and questions here rather than send them to me by private email. By putting them here, you share with other readers, not just with me. I read all comments and try to respond to all serious questions, if I feel I have something useful to add to what others have said. Of course, if you have something to say that truly applies only to you and me, then send me an email.

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For much more about the human nature of self-determined education, see Free to Learn.

Note: The "Unschooling 101" illustration at the top of this article was created by Idzie Desmarais. Idzie is a "kindergarten dropout" who authors a great blog called I'm Unschooled. Yes I can Write.Her site includes, among other things, a list of blogs by teenage and grown unschoolers and a collection of interviews of grown unschoolers.

This is so helpful, Peter. As a homeschooling mother of four, I lean towards unschooling...yet I hold back. I guess I'm fearful, or too indoctrinated by the school system myself. My gut is not at all surprised by your findings. I'm hopeful that this research will help to bring my brain around, too.

Jennifer Jo: I did it, so ANYONE (or nearly anyone) can! I pulled my son from 7th grade; he's now a couple of months shy of 17. If I could do one thing differently it's this: I would have started sooner, and without the hesitation. You might find it helpful to join the Yahoo Group "AlwaysLearning". It's a radical unschooling group run by Sandra Dodd and a few others. I rarely participate in posting myself, and I was often put off by the directness of their opinions early on, but it really resonated with me and I stuck with it. Now, several years down the road, I can say with certainty that that group has guided my own "deschooling" process more than anything else.

Take a deep breath, have faith, and let go...your kids will thank you!

I've worked with unschoolers who have been accepted at Stanford, MIT, NYU, UC Berkeley, and a number of other schools. Some have chosen not to go to college, and they have been successful in a number of ways. Those who do want to go to college need to include traditional subjects in their studies, but they need not be studied in traditional ways; nontraditional studies can be undertaken also. As I wrote in my first comment (my apologies for leaving out "it"), the key is to write a convincing transcript.

I appreciate your feedback and encouragement. But didn't Peter report that the majority made it to college via community college? I was assuming that meant without transcripts. But maybe I misread that?

I enjoyed reading the study and look forward to the rest of the installments. Thank you for all the time and energy you spent on all this research. I have four children and started unschooling late in the game because I caved under the pressure that they should be in school. My oldest signed himself out in 12th grade. Having started so late with my three youngest (16,15.12) I wonder if the damage is already done. I guess I will never really know but after reading the survey it seemed the children who were unschooled from the beginning fared better in their futures. My 12 year old is wanting to go back. She's been home for 6 months. I don't want her to go back..at all... but I won't stop her if that's what she truly desires. I suspect if I forced her to stay home it would backfire eventually and possibly effect her negatively. Have you come across this dilemma before and could you tell me how it worked out if you have?

Concerning your first concern, I should note that the unschoolers in all three of the groups in our study--including the group that left school the latest--seemed to be doing well and were happy with their lives. Those who left later were less likely (though not statistically significantly less) to go on to a bachelor's degree program, and significantly less likely to pursue a career in the arts, than were those in the never-schooled group, but I'm not sure that either of these should be evaluated as "good" or "bad."

And yes, I agree with you about your 12 year old. Any child who really prefers to go to school should be allowed to do so. Two of the respondents to our survey were really angry about their unschooling experiences and both said they wanted to go to school but weren't allowed to. In my mind forcing a child to stay home from school is no more enlightened--maybe less so--than forcing a child to go to school.

I think "self-determined learning" is a more relevant concept, here, than "self-directed learning." A child who has a real choice but chooses a standard school is still a self-determined learner.

It is relatively common for children to go in and out of school. It's interesting to see that the adjustment is not difficult, despite what the school personnel might think. Kids who have been unschooled for years seem to do very well at any grade level of school if they choose to go.

Thank you for responding. I take some comfort from your words and results of this study. It's a rare chance at a glimpse into the possible future for "current unschoolers". I guess they can't be called Pioneers (I was going to use that word) because before there was brick and mortar or what we now know as traditional school, every one was unschooled! And the human race has seem to come along just fine. ;)

Peter, I just wanted to add my 2 cents to agree with you about the importance of "self-determined learning". I am one of the moms who responded to your and Gina's survey of parents of unschooled kids. My son, after being unschooled for 5 years (starting in what would have been his 5th grade year), chose to go to public high school. He liked the school, and attended for 3 years, grades 10-12, and graduated with honors.
Because it was his decision to go, he seemed, to me, more like a college student than a high school kid.
I treated him as an adult, i.e., I did not (and am not the type to) impose any kinds of "rules" about getting homework done, watching TV, using the computer, or playing video games, etc, nor did I ever impose any sort of curfew.
He behaved very responsibly in all areas of his life - including keeping up with his studies and assignments, helping with household chores when asked, and in his activities away from home, including driving.
We generally got/get along very well, although I can't say that my son was ever one of my "best friends", as I would say of my daughter, who was unschooled from age 8 through her teen years and still lives at home, while working and attending college.
My son moved out when he started college, and has been living in apartments with roommates, working part-time and supporting himself ever since.
Knowing as many unschoolers as I do, and based on all my years of reading about the Sudbury schools, I am convinced that that vast majority of children behave responsibly and have good relationships with their parents, when given the freedom of self-determination in their educations, social activities, and general comings-and-goings.

My Gifted son was misdiagnosed as having ODD (a cruel and spurious diagnosis), despite having absolutely none of the symptoms (he was simply zoning out in class for which he was considered oppositional and defiant by his school Principal).

The misdiagnosis all too late accepted by diagnosing agency. However, the damage done by the stigmatizing diagnosis and by the initial failure to make correct diagnosis (giftedness is recognised under Educational legislation as being "special needs", i.e. requiring, inter alia, challenging material) had made school his life unbearable and so he eventually dropped out two years ago, despite getting "amazing in the circumstances" exams results.

There are many children like my son whose real ability and consequent special needs are never discovered. After all the school teaching system is really only suitable for 40%, the remaining 60% being too diverse.

I worry about what will become of my son; your article has given me hope. Thank you so much

I should add to my comments above that some colleges will insist that a transcript come from an accredited school and will therefore not accept a self-made transcript, but in my experience these schools are in the minority.

The people doing the survey are likely positively biased, as you write, because people with a good experience are more likely to participate (and to hear of the survey). On the other hand, I am wrong to assume that children that are unschooled will more often have had problems in school? That would produce a negative bias.

I get what you're saying. But why is there any reason to think that unschoolers would more often have had problems in school than, say, homeschoolers? I've never heard that before. And wouldn't you get the same kind of "bias" regardless of topic: the people who are interested in the topic are more likely to respond?

Just speaking for my family, my son was not, in fact, having any problems in school, other than boredom. I was the one who had changed: I couldn't stand my own cognitive dissonance another minute.

Hi Susan, I was only trying to make a comment on the science of Peters study and it was purely intended in a statistical way. Every individual person and situation is different and I did not want to comment on that or put anyone in bad light.

If you unschooled your son because he was bored, that could also be a source of bias, if that is more common and would thus be a problem for this kind of study. Parents that trust themselves enough to unschool their children is another source of bias.

Your idea of also studying home schooled children is perfect. You could make a similar self-selection survey of home schooled children and compare that to this one. In case of home schooled children (or all children not in schools) it might be possible to make a representative study (if the school districts are willing to give out such information). The results of such a representative study could then be compared with the self-selected study to get a grip on the biases.

Victor, you make a good point here. Besides any biases that stem from who, among unschoolers, chose to respond to the survey, there are biases that come from the initial choice to unschool.

Your comment leads me to share my speculation about one of the group differences I noted in the article. Those in the always-unschooled group were more likely to go on to a bachelor's degree than those in the other groups. Perhaps that is because, on average, they were a different population to begin with. Unlike the other group, they are not people who tried school and found it distasteful or for other reasons had difficulty with it. One could argue that respondents in Groups II and III are to some degree a self-selected group of school rejectors. In contrast, those in Group I had parents who were school-rejectors, but may not have been so themselves, as they never tried school.

I want to make the general point that all studies of this nature must be interpreted cautiously, as I pointed out in the article. We can't really say, from such studies, that one route is better than another for the population as a whole. What we can say is this:

"Hey, here's a group of people who didn't go to school and seem to be doing just fine in life--they are going on to higher education if they choose; they are supporting themselves in jobs they claim to love; and they are very happy with the decision not to attend school in K-12 (or some part of that)." -- For most people in our society that is a revelation.

The real point should be about choice. The ultimate message should be that the unschooling option is a valid one. States and nations that have laws against this option (as so many do), should reconsider!

Most of the young people I work with begin at a community college. Admission requirements vary from state to state. In California anyone 18 or older can attend a community college without regard to any previous school experience and records. Most of my students are younger than 18, sometimes quite a bit younger, and, in order to be regular students, they need a diploma and a transcript (or an equivalent certificate earned through the California High School Proficiency Exam). The transcripts I write for the purpose of community college admission are purely narrative. When someone wants to go directly to a four-year school and has accomplishments that are suitable, I write a much more traditional transcript, showing courses (devising course titles for sometimes nontraditional experiences), grades, credits, a GPA, and test scores. Following a more-or-less standard list of these things, I follow up with course descriptions, reading lists, evaluations from knowledgeable people, and anything else that confirms the student's abilities and accomplishments. These transcript are sometimes 15 pages or more. My school is nothing more than a home office, and it is unaccredited, but graduates have been accepted at many four-year colleges and universities across the country. Any homeschooling family in California can do everything I do, and so can people in some other states. I'd be happy to send a pamphlet on writing transcripts to anyone who requests it in an e-mail sent to beachhi@cruzio.com .

Wes, thank you for contributing your expertise to this discussion. It looks to me like 7 of the respondents mentioned some sort of self-made diploma as part of their answer to the question of how they got into some form of higher education. We may go back and look more specifically at that before final publication. -Peter

I started unschooling my child, but found that even with a wide range of home school groups in my area, I was unable to meet her social needs. It was hard having a child who is extroverted, when I am the opposite. Someone on one of my homeschooling lists suggested I look into a freeschool - and at first I really bristled at the suggestion of putting her into any sort of school.

After I looked at it, I realized to my way of looking at things, it was my idealized version of unschooling with lots of strewing and many friends to socialize with.

Freeschooling has worked very well for my 3 daughters - as they are self directed in their education with freedom for play. I only mention this because of the people in the study who were unhappy about the isolation of unschooling. Free Schooling is a viable alternative for those of a similar mindset.

Thanks for this comment, Anonymous. As many readers know, my interest in children's self-determined education began long ago with a follow-up study of graduates of the Sudbury Valley School--a democratic school where children control their own learning. I have written about this extensively. Research at Sudbury Valley provides much of the context for my book, Free to Learn. Sudbury Valley and schools modeled after it provide a rich educational environment, including an age-mixed group of friends. -Peter

Great question, Alec. I just did a quick count, based on our summary list of careers. I come up with 9 out of the 75 = 11% in STEM fields. But here's the kicker, 6 of these 9 are men, and there are only 16 men in the whole sample, so by this count 38% of the men are in STEM and only 5% (3/58) of the women are.

Of course, we know that in the society as a whole men are much more likely than women to go into STEM careers. Apparently this gender difference in career choice is as strong among unschoolers as it is in the rest of the population. (I wonder if it might even be stronger among unschoolers.) --

[Again, these numbers come from a count based on the career labels in our summary table. We didn't code for STEM, based on a careful definition of the category followed by coding specifically for it based on the participants' descriptions of their work. Your question leads me to think we should do that, and perhaps we will before final publication. A careful coding might change the percentages from what I presented here, but it is very unlikely to change the overall conclusion.]

Your question and my answer really point to the problem of the gender bias in who responded to the survey. If we had more men we would see a different distribution of careers (fewer in the arts, more in STEM).

Addition to comment, June 20, 2014. We have now more carefully coded the careers for STEM, using the NSF definition. There are more STEM than my initial quick count. By the more careful coding, 22% of the women and 50% of the men are in STEM careers. I'll say more on this in the third post of this series. --- Again, thank you for getting us to look at this question.

Many parents keep their kids home for this very reason: to allow them to "learn life and not be so protected". At 16, my son has the freedom to choose virtually everything in his life: when and how much he sleeps, what and when he eats, how he spends his time and with whom, and what he wants to learn. His life is HIS. He values his life because it is valuable. Self-determination is the essence of self-ownership...and last time I checked, they weren't teaching that in school.

I think that most parents want their children to grow up to be happy, healthy adults who will be able to participate in happy, healthy relationships, and to be able to function independently from the state. I don't think committing a child to the care of a state institution for 13+ years is the best way of achieving these goals. Do you?

Re: careers and interests, my 2 girls were both pretty much unschooled. They both have careers from childhood interests that began around 8-10 yrs old. One has a masters in violin performance, so that would be arts. The other has a biology major with chemistry minor and an RN degree, so that would be stem. Both started at community college before they turned 18

Whilst it is no surprise that for SOME children this has worked well, the reality is that those who needed far more structure and were doing little but sit watching TV / computer games / playing sport ALL the time would not appear in this survey. Hopefully the parents would have realised that they needed structure and imposed something closer to homeschooling; those who won't will have ended up totally uneducated. I have no doubt this is a great approach for some - the danger is that it becomes an excuse for parents to avoid their responsibilities; certainly the reality of the parents of neglected children playing the homeschooling 'card' to get social workers off their backs is one that discredits the whole movement.

Whilst it's no surprise that SOME children survive and even thrive in the environment of conventional schooling, the reality is that many end up with a life-long hatred for learning, under-achieve, and develop depression or other emotional problems due to the toxic environment. Some even become criminals or get addicted to drugs.

Do you see how bizarre your comments sound when applied to conventional schooling, even though everything I stated is inarguable fact?

Sadly, if a homeschooled or unschooled child fails to meet their potential, unschooling will be blamed, even though far more conventionally schooled children develop problems.

And if you want to be a computer game designer then playing games all day might be quite useful.

What about if the homeschooler spent all their time reading? Would they then be 'neglected' and in need of some structure to get a proper education? Even a generation ago reading all day could be seen as problematic and unhealthy.

My point is not that people, kids or not, unschooled or not, cannot spend their time in unhealthy ways, or even that homeschooled children are never neglected. I just think it's worth drawing attention to some of your assumptions. If there is a problem, it does not lie in what kids are doing per se, but somewhere else in their situation or attitudes.

How can a homeschooler - not to mention ANYONE - ever achieve full mastery in a passion area without putting in their 10,000+ hours of dedication?

Unschooling is ripe to produce many individuals with great mastery in their chosen fields by the simple fact that they have chosen to spend their precious time in just those endeavors at the exclusion of some other topics.

Traditional schoolers, especially in todays teach-to-the-test atmosphere, are sadly apt to be masters at one topic...test-taking.

My understanding is that the original research indicated that on average 10,000 hours is required for mastery; it isn't always. See the book "The Sports Gene" for a persuasive debunking of the 10,000-hours-always-needed idea. And see http://blog.chabris.com/2013/10/why-malcolm-gladwell-matters-and-why.html for a critique of Malcolm Gladwell's work, in which he made this idea popular.

If unschooled children seem to need some sort of structure, to expand their interests and experiences from a narrow focus on TV, computer games, or any other sole activity, that structure need not necessarily be "imposed" by the parents, and certainly need not be "something closer to homeschooling".
What is generally far better received by the kids is for the parents to find out about as many opportunities for structured activities outside the home as possible, and strongly encourage their children to choose one or two (or more) to participate in - or at least, to try.
Activities need not be specifically "academic" in nature in order to produce (often as a side-consequence) the result of improving the child's academic abilities and knowledge.
Actually, playing online games, itself, tends to improve children's reading, typing, and research skills.
But, in most locations in the U.S. and other modernized countries, there are a great variety of structured activities in which children can participate! Generally, if a child is emotionally and physically healthy, s/he will enjoy doing *something* in a structured setting, on a regular basis. It is up to the parents to help the children find out about the activities and groups near them, and to provide for transportation and meet the costs of such activities, to whatever extent possible. (Even impoverished families can usually find free group or outside-the-home activities for their kids, or can barter in lieu of payment.)
When my son was 14 and 15, he spent an awful lot of time playing online multi-player role-playing games. The computer games themselves advanced his knowledge and reading/typing/spelling/research skills. But he ALSO participated in some athletic activities, socialized with local friends, participated in two different Scouting groups, and took two or three different classes with a local homeschool group.
I never *imposed* these structured activities on him, but I made an effort to find out about all the opportunities available to homeschoolers, within a 20 mile radius of our home, and I supported and encouraged my kids to choose something to participate in!
It didn't matter whether the structured activity they chose was "academic" or something else. They learned from everything they did!
They also gained all kinds of valuable knowledge just from engaging in conversations with my husband and me, and with everyone else they spoke to. And from listening to the news on the radio while we drove, and watching occasional informative TV shows with the family, etc.
There is almost always more learning going on than an outsider would see at a casual glance - even among kids who seem to be obsessed with watching TV or playing computer games.

I get asked almost daily (or so it feels!) questions about how my kids (they are very young) will get into college/university if they're homeschooled (let alone unschooled). I am so pleased to be able to use this link to give some answers. Yes, not so statistically significant but certainly important and thought-provoking for those who have never thought this way before. Thank you Peter, the survey respondents and everyone who made comments.

I'm not sure where you are posting from, but I can assure you that in the UK the experience of 6th form colleges with home schooled kids is so positive that they don't have any problems with access. There are plenty of networks of home-schooling parents available, so I'm sure that you will find support, though to be fair, at the risk of outrageous labelling, they tend either to be conservative Christians or anarchists / hippies, so if you don't fit either of those labels you may find it a bit more difficult. Best of luck anyway; the kids I know came out of it very well and are doing well.

My name is Rachel Lazerus, and I’m a research analyst at the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org). I saw your first blog post on unschooling, a topic that is very interesting to me. I’ve been studying homeschooling methods for some time now, and I have several questions about your methodology and analysis that I hope you can answer.

1) Your definition of “unschooling”, at least in the terms of this study, seems mostly defined by what unschooling is not -- not attending school, not following a curriculum, and not taking tests. Under this definition, unschooling includes parents who neglect their children and do not provide them with educational resources or opportunities: indeed, we at CRHE have been contacted by many homeschooled alumni whose parents claimed to be unschooling or using unschooling methods but instead actively blocked their children from obtaining an education. Do you have a positive description of unschooling, or a working definition that includes what unschooling is rather than just what it is not?

2) Considering the different methods and trends within unschooling, were you able to subdivide the unschooling participants in your survey by these trends (e.g. Holtian, radical unschooling, etc.)? While n=75 is large enough for the statistical methods you used, dividing by adherence to a trend rather than years of unschooling may actually give you more meaningful in-group divisions.

3) You acknowledge that your sample is driven entirely by volunteers, and thus you have overrepresentation of people who are very happy with their unschooling experience and enjoy talking about this. To mitigate this, did you attempt any method of recruitment aside from posting on your blog and others like it? For example, did you contact the unschooling parents in your previous study and ask them to pass it along to their children?

4) Did you ask for any demographic or socioeconomic information beyond age and gender? If not, why not? I ask particularly because research shows that being in a resource-rich environment leads to relatively higher levels of success on many of the measures you asked about. Thus having demographic and socioeconomic information could allow you to determine what factors in these students’ education were unique to unschooling and which were simply the results of living in a resource-rich environment.

5) When studying a group as nontraditional as unschoolers, I find it odd that your measure of success is something as traditional as “higher education”, especially because it implies placing value in a traditional schooling method, replete with curricula and test-taking. Was this for comparative purposes of graduation rates of traditionally-schooled students? Why focus on college education rather than standardized quality of life measures?

6) Focusing on areas of employment and their connection to childhood interests is an interesting choice, and one that makes a lot of sense. However, considering that the median of your sample is 24 and areas of employment often change during one’s twenties, it’s not clear if a single survey is the best way of demonstrating this. Is there any intention of conducting a longitudinal study with this sample, or in a future study?

As a fellow researcher of homeschooling, of which unschoolers are a subset, I wish that you had included a matched control group of either public-schoolers or curriculum-based homeschoolers, so that I had a baseline for interpreting the results of your study against non-unschoolers. You report relatively high levels of job satisfaction, matching childhood interests, and seeking higher education, but from reading your blog, I have no idea whether these are also characteristic of all unschoolers, of all who are homeschooled, or of the general population. I hope that these questions are addressed in future posts.

I know that you’re not trying to say that these are the outcomes of “all” unschoolers -- but by putting these numbers out there in a vacuum without defining your terms, gathering background factors, or attempting to control for lurking variables, you must know by now that your research is going to be seen as a full-throated triumph of unschooling rather than as a very limited qualitative sample gathered by people highly invested in unschooling as a concept. Unschooling can indeed work successfully: I have friends and family members who are very involved unschoolers, and I see their kids doing very well. But I have also seen enough abuse and neglect going on under the name of “unschooling” to be skeptical of any broad-reaching claims.

Hi Rachel, these are great questions and concerns, and I applaud your work related to protecting home educated children from abuse and neglect. We should be concerned about that for all children. I don't know if my answers to your questions will be satisfactory to you, but I will attempt to address each of them, briefly. I'll paste in your questions and respond to them one by one:

1) "Your definition of “unschooling”, at least in the terms of this study, seems mostly defined by what unschooling is not -- not attending school, not following a curriculum, and not taking tests. Under this definition, unschooling includes parents who neglect their children and do not provide them with educational resources or opportunities: indeed, we at CRHE have been contacted by many homeschooled alumni whose parents claimed to be unschooling or using unschooling methods but instead actively blocked their children from obtaining an education. Do you have a positive description of unschooling, or a working definition that includes what unschooling is rather than just what it is not?"

You are correct that our definition is primarily in terms of what unschooling is not (it's not schooling). However, we did also include this sentence: "They may, in various ways, provide an environmental context and environmental support for the child's learning." Our goal was to include the broadest sample possible of adults who were not schooled, including any who may have been abused or neglected and wanted to report on that. Moreover, we have found that any more specific definition of unschoolers seems to rule out one or another of the unschooling philosophies that you allude to in the next question. We were pleased to see that several of our respondents (to be mentioned later) were never considered "unschoolers" by their parents or by themselves when they were young--they were "dropouts." I'm glad we got their stories too.
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2) "Considering the different methods and trends within unschooling, were you able to subdivide the unschooling participants in your survey by these trends (e.g. Holtian, radical unschooling, etc.)? While n=75 is large enough for the statistical methods you used, dividing by adherence to a trend rather than years of unschooling may actually give you more meaningful in-group divisions."

One of our questions was about the degree and nature of parental involvement in the the young person's education, and we coded the respondents into three categories based on that. We will discuss that in the published article and maybe, also, in the fourth in this series of blog posts. However, for an already existing discussion of that, please see our previous study, of unschooled families, where we also asked that question and discussed the findings. You can find the reference to my blog posts and to our published article on that study in the introduction to the present post.
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3) "You acknowledge that your sample is driven entirely by volunteers, and thus you have overrepresentation of people who are very happy with their unschooling experience and enjoy talking about this. To mitigate this, did you attempt any method of recruitment aside from posting on your blog and others like it? For example, did you contact the unschooling parents in your previous study and ask them to pass it along to their children?"

Yes, we did contact the unschooling parents of the previous study and asked them to pass it along. Most of them, however, had children who were still too young to be part of the present study. However, that would not have mitigated the bias, because there is no reason to believe that the people who heard of the study to this route and responded would be any less positive about unschooling than were people who heard about it through another route.

We did get responses from three (and arguably a fourth) who were very unhappy with their parents' neglect or isolation of them from learning opportunities. Even though this is a small sample, we will give full voice to their comments in the post having to do with respondents' evaluations of unschooling and in our published article or articles. The points they make need to be heard.
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4) "Did you ask for any demographic or socioeconomic information beyond age and gender? If not, why not? I ask particularly because research shows that being in a resource-rich environment leads to relatively higher levels of success on many of the measures you asked about. Thus having demographic and socioeconomic information could allow you to determine what factors in these students’ education were unique to unschooling and which were simply the results of living in a resource-rich environment."

We did not ask in any direct way for that information in this study. We did ask for some of that information in the previous study, but found it difficult to interpret or use, even in that study, where the sample was larger and we were getting the information directly from the parents (but see our discussion of that in the report on the first study). In the present study, the participants' responses about the kinds of things they did as unschoolers gives us a more useful sense of the kinds of environments in which they grew up. We can conclude with some confidence that most of the sample came from homes that are "rich" in terms of intellectual vigor and concern and support for the children's activities, not necessarily economically rich. The few for whom that wasn't true told us that, and we will discuss it in the post on evaluation.
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5)" When studying a group as nontraditional as unschoolers, I find it odd that your measure of success is something as traditional as “higher education”, especially because it implies placing value in a traditional schooling method, replete with curricula and test-taking. Was this for comparative purposes of graduation rates of traditionally-schooled students? Why focus on college education rather than standardized quality of life measures?"

We have no measure of success or failure in this study, except the partitipatns'' own evaluations of the extent to which they see their own unschoolling as beneficial to them or not. We are interested in experiences with higher education and careers not because we think they are indices of life success, but simply because we and others are curious about how unschoolers approach these realms that are of such concern to many in our culture. Many people who think about unschooling wonder if it is possible for unschooled young people to go to college. They don't want to preclude the possibility of college, should the young person eventually want it, so they want to know if college is possible and, if so, how does it happen. We don't consider the respondents who went to college to be in any general sense more or less successful than the others; we just want to know how they did it and what the experience was like for them. The same for careers.
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6) "Focusing on areas of employment and their connection to childhood interests is an interesting choice, and one that makes a lot of sense. However, considering that the median of your sample is 24 and areas of employment often change during one’s twenties, it’s not clear if a single survey is the best way of demonstrating this. Is there any intention of conducting a longitudinal study with this sample, or in a future study?"

Actually, as will be pointed out in the post on careers, some of these people have already made career changes. We have no current plans to do a longitudinal study. Such studies are always difficult because of the drop-out rate and the problem of keeping track of the sample. We did this study with no funding except our own contributions, in the limited time we have on top of our already very busy lives.
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"As a fellow researcher of homeschooling, of which unschoolers are a subset, I wish that you had included a matched control group of either public-schoolers or curriculum-based homeschoolers, so that I had a baseline for interpreting the results of your study against non-unschoolers. You report relatively high levels of job satisfaction, matching childhood interests, and seeking higher education, but from reading your blog, I have no idea whether these are also characteristic of all unschoolers, of all who are homeschooled, or of the general population. I hope that these questions are addressed in future posts."

Our purpose in this study was not to compare unschoolers with any other group, but simply to describe the experiences of a set of unschooers. We can't say whether makes a person more likely or less likely to do such and such or be such and such than some other educational procedure. Indeed, the only way get at that that in a scientifically valid way would be to conduct an experiment, and that is impossible--we can't randomly assign some young people to "uscnooling," others to "homeschooling," etc.. Your suggestion of matched controls would help, were it possible, but would still lead to criticism--there is one ground on which you can't match them, and that could be the most critical ground--the personality or family variable that leads some to unschool and others to do something else.

Despite the limitations, which we readily acknowledge, we believe this study was worth doing. It is a vehicle by which unschoolers who are happy with their experience could tell us and others about how they managed that experience-- how they went to college and adapted there if they chose to do that; what kinds of careers they have gone on to and how they are managing those careers; what they liked and didn't like about unschooling. It is also a vehicle through which those who are angry about their unschooling experience could tell us and others about that (even though there were few of them).

Moreover, for many people--maybe most people--in our culture, the simple finding that it possible to do the kinds of things these young people have done without going to school is a revelation. There's no grounds, in this study, for concluding that usnschooling produces superior outcomes (whatever that would mean) than other educational routes; but there is fodder for thinking that it is a viable alternative and shouldn't be outlawed, as it currently is in many states and countries.

Thank you again for taking the time to raise these questions; and, again, I thank you for your work.

I don't see how you could call yourself a researcher when it's pretty obvious from your organization's website you already have your own perception of home schooling. Researchers are supposed to be objective. You must have been educated in public schools.

I don't believe for a second that your organization is looking out for the kids. That's the typical heart strings tug propaganda from a group with an agenda. Home schooling is starting to become a real threat to public schools and their supporters. I'm not surprised to see straw man organizations like yours popping up.

Stay out of everyone else lives Rachael. We home school because the public schools are so bad. And we don't need "experts" like you coming into our home telling us what to do anymore. Stick to your crumbling public schools and quit being a bully.

Interesting that you didn't get the 232 (minimum) kids that were unschooled by the parents of your 1st survey to give their unschooling views.

Was there a reason you chose not to include those kids? Were any of the 75 respondents kids of those families? That would have been more interesting & meaningful than only 75, mostly female respondents.

Also, once these kids get into employment or higher education, with set schedules, set expectations, having to do duties of their job/studies that may not interest them, or that they dislike, how do they fare?

Good question...One that's been wondered by many...even the parents of these children :).I would think they handle it like everyone else does, schooled traditionally or otherwise. Few people stay in their first jobs forever. It's kind of like dating at first. You date a number of different people to see what you like or don't like...what works for you or not. No one really should stay in a position they aren't happy in. It's and incentive for all of us to find what makes us tick and make it happen. If it's higher education I would think they fare as well if not better than schooled children since they aren't burned out by the time they get there. They would also be choosing some study that interests them and even then many schooled people change majors all the time as well. So it shouldn't be that unusual for them to change as well. Many Home/Unschooled kids are better at self managing time, and are more in tune with what they want and how to go about getting what they want because they've been doing it for themselves all along. Schooled children have been told what to do for so many years, it's like a prison mentality...stand up, line up, sit down, shut up, go here, go there, eat for 20 minutes, etc etc.that once on there own "freedom" may come across as overwhelming. Following to see what Peter thinks.

As I said in response to a previous questioner, we did attempt to recruit from the families that participated in the first study; however, in most cases the children in those families were too young to participate in the study of grown unschoolers. Only a few of the participants in the grown unschoolers' study came from those families. In retrospect, we probably could have tried harder to recruit from those families, by sending repeated requests. Concerning your question about employment and higher education, that's what the next two posts will be about. -Peter

Stephanie wrote:
"Interesting that you didn't get the 232 (minimum) kids that were unschooled by the parents of your 1st survey to give their unschooling views."

Having responded to the 1st survey, I got a request to pass along the invitation to the grown unschoolers take the 2nd survey to my kids. I forwarded the email to my daughter (age 20, at the time), AND *asked* her to respond to the survey. But she wasn't interested in using any of her very limited free time to answer survey questions. The survey was conducted during the school year, and my daughter spent almost all of her time at home doing course-work for her college classes. (She has had a very busy schedule the past two years, as she works part-time as a lifeguard, and attends college part-time.)
If this survey had been extended through the summer, my daughter - and possibly a large number of other formerly unschooled current college students - would probably have been more willing to take the time to answer the survey!

I love this blog, Freedom To Learn, and the many followers it seems to attract. I haven't found other blogs on Psychology Today with this much fervor in comments.

This blog is something I check regularly to see if there's anything new, including and especially the comments. This blog is my rock amidst the storm of unquestioned assumptions of the importance of schooling. This blog gives me a ray of hope, an excitement that an education revolution is on the way.

Do you suppose a lot of unschoolers are intellectually gifted? Gifted kids have an intense drive to learn.

All children had an intense drive to learn from the moment of their birth. If they didn't, they would still be lying on their crib and crying for food.

For thousands of years which is most part of human history, we lived in hunter-gatherer cultures where adults don't tell children what to learn, yet all people grew up to become productive adults. If you think hunting and tracking animals was a easy task, think again.

Really interesting to read the results here & compare them to my own experiences. If I had found out about this site earlier then I might have participated in the survey myself!

You know, I didn't find out about the term unschooling until fairly recently, but it fits what I experienced perfectly. It was only when I was getting burned out from college classes that I started to read more about the way I learned before college. Then I found out about books by John Holt, Ivan Illich, John Taylor Gatto, etc, and devoured everything I could in between classes. I guess it was partly to remind myself that learning wasn't all about grades and classes, lest I forgot while being surrounded by grades, GPAs, & classmates who thought this was the only way to learn, but it was also to learn more about the history of unschooling and alternative education movements which came before me.

Hmm, I guess I fit the profile of the survey takers somewhat. I'm female & working in web design/development, so I guess it's like a cross between visual arts and IT. I'm kind of surprised there wasn't a huge number in IT, given it evolves so fast there's always something new to learn, not to mention there's a lot of problem-solving & creating things involved. A lot of them going into art makes sense though.

Anyway, I'm glad I found this blog! It's very interesting and I'll be sure to read through some more of the older articles, as well as come back later to see what new ones there are. Can't wait to read more. Great work & keep it up!

Curious as to your preliminary thoughts as to the relationship between many unschooled now adults landing in creative fields? Perhaps this will be explained in future articles but wondering which came first -- unschooling lifestyle or desire to pursue creative arts? Anything jump out at this stage? Thank you for the research.

Good question, about the relationship between unschooling and subsequent creativity. There's no way to know about cause and effect based on the study itself. My guess is that it's some of each. Creative, innovative families are more likely to choose unschooling than are other families,, and unschooling itself nurtures creativity. Unschooled children have to create their own schedules and experiences every day; their whole life is creative and innovative. -Peter